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CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 



SPEECH 


HON. JOHN P. 

OF NEVADA, 


JONES, 


IN THE 


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SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 


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Thursday, March 9, 1882. 




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SPEECH 


' OF 

II OX. JOHN P. JONES. 


CHINESE IMMIGRATION. 

The Senate having under consideration the hill (S. No. 71) to enforce treaty 
stipulations relating to the Chinese— 

Mr. JONES, of Nevada, said: 

Mr. President : Such has been the advance of public sentiment on 
this question in the last ten years, since the people of the Pacilic coast, 
with scarcely a following in any portion of the country, first pre¬ 
sented it as a national issue, that I have in this debate been content 
up to this time to remain silent and hear those defend our position 
in this body who a few years ago were against ns. In an elaborate 
way some three years ago, when a bill similar to the present was un¬ 
der discussion here, I presented my views in favor of it. That bill 
was passed by Congress, but was vetoed by the Executive because it 
was obnoxious to some of the terms of a treaty existing at that time. 
Happily a new treaty has since been made, the terms of which are 
not in conflict with the provisions of the bill under discussion. 

I have been waiting up to this hour in the discussion to hear some 
good reason why this bill should not be passed. I listened with great 
pleasure to the speech of the Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. Hoar, ] 
and was quite bewildered with the statement made by him that 
there existed a right, a great organic and fundamental right, entitling 
individuals of every other nationality to come to this country at will, 
and that we had no right to prevent them. He stated this proposi¬ 
tion as confidently as though its correctness were universally recog¬ 
nized. 

Mr. President, what nation has ever admitted that right ? What 
nation on the face of the earth has ever ceased to claim the right to 
decide who shall form the body of its citizenship, who shall be ad¬ 
mitted into its society, who shall come within its jurisdiction? I 
have looked in vain to find a single nation that has acted thus. It 
might be thought that some eminent writer on moral, political, or 
international law had stated in clear terms some proposition resem¬ 
bling that which the honorable Senator has here put forth. But I 
have been unable to find a single writer who has made any such 
assertion in any work which would be regarded as a standard author¬ 
ity. Yet the statement is as confidently made as if it were axio¬ 
matic. 

The Senator from Massachusetts informs us that the Declaration 
of Independence, made by the most religious men of the most re¬ 
ligious period in our history, asserts this doctrine, in face of the fact 
that there were at least six hundred thousand of the human race in 
slavery in this country when the signers of that document declared 



4 


that all men were created equal and had certain inalienable rights, 
among which were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The 
charge of untruthfulness and cowardice would lie against them if, 
having intended to include the slaves in the category of “all men,” 
they made no special protest against slavery as it then existed in 
this country, nor any recommendation that the slaves should be set 
free. 

It might be answered to this that it would have been injurious to 
the slave and unjust to the master to do so. But the framers of the 
Constitution, many of whom signed the Declaration of Independ¬ 
ence, not only did not free the slaves then in the country, but they 
extended the time for twenty years when negroes might be brought 
into our ports and consigned to slavery. Yet tbe Senator tells us 
that the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to say 
that all men of all races were equal, and that they were entitled to 
come to this country at their own pleasure, and that this nation had 
no right whatever to prevent them. 

Therefore I think the Senator from Massachusetts fails to sustain 
his case in citing from the Declaration of Independence the proposi¬ 
tion that all men are created equal and are entitled to life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness. They are entitled to liberty, but under 
what condition ? Is it the liberty to live where they are, to enjoy 
the proceeds of their own labor, to have the care of their own fami¬ 
lies ? What is this liberty ? The Declaration of Independence does 
not define it. 

Then the Senator, speaking one hundred years after the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence, informs us what the signers of that- document 
meant to assert. But let us see the opinion of one of the most dis¬ 
tinguished names to that declaration ; a man who is regarded in New 
England as the wisest man of all his day and generation; a man who 
perhaps was better known in both hemispheres than any other man 
connected with Revolutionary times; a man of whom the elder Pitt 
said, before the American Revolution, that he was “an honor not only 
to England but to human nature,” and of whom Mirabeau said, in an¬ 
nouncing his death to the French Assembly, that he was “ the genius 
which freed America and has shed a fiood of light over Europe.” 
When writing generally on political economy and upon the rights of 
a nation to decide who shall come within its borders and what their 
general legislation should be, he said: 

There is, in short, no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals hut what 
is raado by their crowding and interfering with each other’s means of subsistence. 
Was the face of the earth vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and 
overspread with one kind only, as, for instance, with fennel; and, were it empty 
of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be replenished from one nation only, 
as, for instance, with Englishmen. Thus there are supposed to be now upward 
of one million English souls in North America, (though it is thought scarce eighty 
thousand have been brought over sea.) 

The number of purely white people in the world is proportionately very small. 
All Africa is black or tawny; Asia, chiefly tawny; America, (exclusive of the new¬ 
comers,) wholly so. 

While we are, as I may call it, scouring our planet by clearing America of woods, 
and so making this side of our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of inhab¬ 
itants in Mars or Venus, why should we, in the sight of superior beings, darken 
its people ? Why increase the sons of Africa by planting them in America, where 
we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks and tawnies, of increas¬ 
ing the lovely white and red ? 

These are the sentiments of Benjamin Franklin, as he himself de" 
dared them. Here he not only asserts the right but the duty of 
excluding the tawny and the black races, in order that our own race 
may be kept intact and uncontaminated, and that our own civiliza¬ 
tion may be preserved in its integrity. 


5 


I for one cannot conceive that a nation has not the right to exclude 
from its shores whatever the mass of its people shall believe injurious 
to its welfare. Whenever it abdicates this, it abdicates the very 
highest function of government and betrays the most essential duties 
for which organized societies.are called into existence. Whenever 
this country believes that the incoming of a race or any portion of a 
race is inimical to the best interests of our people, then the time has 
come and the power is inherent to remedy the threatened evil. 

The Senator, to sustain his position, next quotes from the Holy 
Scriptures the passage that God made of one blood all the nations 
of the earth ; and the Senator maintains that all men of every race 
have the right to come and go and intermingle without let or liin- 
derance. Now, that is the only text to be found in the Scriptures 
that has any reference to anthropology or ethnology, and I think 
that the Senator’s support for his doctrine of ethnology is as faulty 
as his logic. Unfortunately for him the original Greek Testament 
contains no word corresponding to the word “blood” in the author¬ 
ized version. The Catholic Church from the time of St. Jerome never 
used this word, and it does not occur in the revised edition recently 
published. The language there used is that God “made of one every 
nation of men,” not of “ one blood,” but of one form perhaps; so that 
there is no warrant for the use of the word “blood” upon which 
this whole ethnological controversy is made to turn. 

I have no time nor inclination to discuss the proposition laid down 
by the Senator [Mr. Hawley] who last spoke, and by other Senators, 
concerning the duties of nations and individuals as contradistin¬ 
guished from the rights as limited by their powers. The rights we 
have practictilly to deal with are those defined and secured by law 
in different countries. Theoretical writers find in an imaginary state 
of nature the source of political and social rights. But man has 
never been found except as connected with some tribe or nation, and 
his rights as affected by that connection are the only ones he really 
possesses. They are controlled by the power of which law is the 
expression, and to attempt to describe any other species of right is to 
become hopelessly involved i^ an abstract and useless discussion. 
We have to apply at last the principle of power as formulated in the 
law of each country, and the law so framed is the only right we can 
have so long as it remains unchanged. 

Who can doubt that the European nations had a right to drive the 
Indians back and take possession of the soil ? The Catholic powers, 
of Europe believed that the Pope, disregarding all rights on the part 
of the Indians, had a right to distribute this vast territory as he saw 
proper. In this country we have great Indian reservations of seventy, 
eighty, and one hundred miles square, reservations which we have 
set apart for the use and occupancy of the Indians. In most of these 
reservations the white men of this country have no right to set a 
foot. Now, if there be a great, inherent, fundamental right that the 
people of all foreign countries may come here at will, and that we 
have no right to stop them, how is it that we can prevent our own 
people from enferiug upon an Indian reservation? Simply on the 
principle that it is better for the Indian and better for the whites 
that we should do so. In dealing with foreign immigration the only 
question we have to consider is what is best for our own race. The 
earth, from time immemorial, has been occupied by various nations, 
and these nations in dealing with each other have been compelled to 
treat their respective governments, advanced or backward as they 
might be, as each supreme iu the management of their internal af- 


6 


fairs, and each entitled to take care of their own people in their own 
way. Every writer on international law agrees that no nation can 
afford to indulge in the instincts of benevolence; that its entire 
legislation must be based upon the good that may come to its own 
people. 

Now, to turn to another branch of this discussion. The general 
question is asked, “ Is this superior race of ours afraid of the compe¬ 
tition with this inferior Chinese race ? ” 

What are the real facts of the case, and why do our people fear Chi¬ 
nese immigration ? I can best illustrate the subject in the concrete. 
I recollect one time in Virginia City, Nevada, that a miner who was 
working a thousand feet underground in the mines came to me and 
said: 

You do not fully understand this Chinese immigration and the effect it lias upon 
us ; you do not thoroughly comprehend what it means when applied to us. You 
feel perfectly secure in your position as the superintendent of a large number 
of men ; and it is immaterial to you, as far as your own position is concerned, who 
the workmen may be that are under your control; but to us it makes a vast dif¬ 
ference. I work a thousand feet underground. I go every morning and take 
my lantern a thousand feet from the cheery light of day, and work hard all day for 
$4. On that hillside there is a little cottage in which my wife and four children 
live. The forces of our civilization have, in the struggle for an adequate remu¬ 
neration to labor, given me enough to support that wife and those children in the 
decency and comfort in which you see them now. I have separate room’s in which 
the children may sleep ; my wife must be clothed so that she does not feel ashamed 
in mixing with her neighbors ; the children must be clothed as befits decency and 
order and the gradeof civilization in which we live, and we must have a variety of 
food to which we have been accustomed and a taste for which we have inherited 
from our ancestors. The Chinaman can do as much work underground as I can. 
While my work is very arduous I go to it with a light heart and perform it cheer¬ 
fully because it enables me to support my wife and my children. I am in hopes to 
bring up my daughters to be good wives and faithful mothers, and to offer my 
sons better opportunities in life than I had myself. I cheerfully contribute to the 
support of schools, churches, charitable institutions, and other objects that enter 
into our daily life, but after I have maintained my family and performed these du¬ 
ties not much is left of my wages when the week is ended. 

How is it with the Chinaman ? He has no wife and family. He performs none 
of these duties. Forty or fifty of his kind can live in a house no larger than mine. 
He craves no variety of food. He has inherited no taste for comfort or for social 
enjoyment. Conditions that satisfy him and make him contented would make my 
life not worth living. 

Does it surprise you that under these conditions I shall be driven out of em¬ 
ployment by the Chinaman? And when that happens what shall Ido, and where 
shall I go ? Philanthropists complacently advise us to seek some other field of 
labor; and suppose I do this, will the Chinese be less able to drive me out of that 
new field than he has been to drive me out of this ? And. besides that, how can I 
go ? Suppose I give up my home here, how shall I meet the expenses of moving 
and securing a new shelter for my family ? Why, the philanthropists might as well 
advise me to start a banking-house or a wholesale dry-goods store. Like little 
Joe, in Bleak House, the Chinaman is the policeman that chivies me and makes 
me move on, because he is able and willing to do as much work as I can for the 
smallest amount that will support animal life. I am as hardy as any of my fellows, 
and the same conditions that drive me out of employment will drive every other 
man in my situation out of employment. 

You have got some thousands of workmen here in exactly the same position I am. 
When these are driven out, what will be the situation ? You have a society now 
that is governed by patriotic instincts; a society that maintains civil government; 
maintains schools and churches and all the institutions of civilization ; all around 
you are the houses of American workmen whom you know, whose language you 
understand, whose traditions, hopes, and fears are common to our race, whose gods 
are your gods, and whose affections are your affections. What will you have in 
their place ? Instead of them you will have Chinese hovels, Chinese huts every¬ 
where, and instead of an American civilization you will have got a Chinese ci viliza- 
tion, with all its degrading accessories, precisely as you might find it in China. 
Around you would be a population of Chinese, with Chinese tastes, Chinese lan¬ 
guage, and Chinese customs. 

By the genius of our people and by the aid of the machinery which we have 
invented it has been made possible for the American workman to have a certain 


7 


share of the products of industry which is much larger than in any other country. 
Without contributing anything toward this the Chinaman comes in, taking ad- 
Tantage of our skill and of our toil and of our. struggles, and drives us from the 
fields of industry which we have created and which our race alone could create. 

Mr. President, that is exactly what has happened in San Fran¬ 
cisco. One after another the whites have been driven out of employ¬ 
ment by the Chinese in various branches of industry. It is no answer 
to say that the average rate of wages in San Francisco is up to or 
above the rate of wages in the Eastern States. The American work¬ 
man has found out that no matter what rate he proposes to work 
for, the Chinaman will put his rate just enough below to secure the 
employment. He is too good a trader to put it any lower than is 
necessary to drive out his American competitor. 

The main objection to the incoming of the Chinese cannot be brought 
against Europeans of our own race aud nearly related to us. They 
soon assimilate with us, they are bone of our bone and tlesh of our 
flesh, and have hopes, fears, and traditions identical with our own. 
They readily adopt our manners, customs, and language, and soon 
become an undistinguishable part of our body-politic. 

And, sir, it must be remembered in this connection that it was not 
we alone who achieved independence. The principles which nerved 
those who fought for liberty in this country were principles that had 
been fought for long before the Declaration of Independence. Not all 
the lovers of liberty came over in the Mayflower. The people in every 
country in Europe have struggled for liberty on every battle-field from 
Marston Moor to Magenta. They have our instincts; they have our 
tastes. Their God is our God. They are inherently lovers of liberty. 
They have been struggling for it throughout the centuries, and it was 
the public opinion there, the great mass of the people sympathizing 
with us, that helped us in a large measure to achieve the liberty we 
now enjoy. 

When and where did the Chinese race ever make a single declaration 
for liberty ? When and where did they strike one single blow for 
freedom or free institutions ? Why, sir, races are not instructed in 
self-government in an hour, nor in a single generation, nor in a single 
century. The capacity for self-government is the result of the teach¬ 
ing of generations, and the United States is the last and best fruit 
of a struggle that has been waged by the Caucasian race for thirty 
centuries in favor of freedom, in which the Chinese have borne no 
part. Every fiber in their heart, every corpuscle in their blood has 
been molded in the spirit of despotism under which they have lived 
uncomplainingly. 

According to the latest estimates there are 450,000,000 of that race, 
trained like athletes against poverty, living in the very face of star¬ 
vation, and consequently living on the very edges and in the very 
conditions of crime. I state it as a philosophic fact that whoever 
lives the best is the most civilized and the most moral, and whenever 
you approach the place where a struggle is made against starvation, 
there you approach the conditions where crime is most prevalent. 

The Chinese people have lived in this condition, which conduces 
to crime, for almost unnumbered centuries. History, written and mon¬ 
umental, shows that the Chinese Empire substantially as it exists 
to-day antedates the pyramids, antedates the law written on the 
tablets of stone. And these are the people that the Senator from 
Massachusetts in a single generation is going to make good citizens! 
These people, indurated and buried under fifty centuries of stagnation, 
petrified in oppressive forms and oppressive systems, are to be made 


8 


good citizens of tlie United States in one single generation! To dem¬ 
onstrate this, he takes some one of the meek-eyed Chinamen 'who are 
studying in Massachusetts and tells us how intelligent and lovable he 
was. Everybody understands that, to deal philosophically with race 
distinction, the exception must he excluded. You cannot take some 
exceptional individual and judge of his whole race by him. You must 
take into consideration the history and characteristics of a whole race 
if you hope to deal intelligently with its possibilities. 

What, then, I ask has been the contribution from China ? Oppres¬ 
sion, barbarism, degradation. A civilization purely material, nothing 
spiritual about it; everything commutable in money ; no injury that 
a man can inflict on a Chinaman that he is not willing to take a 
money compensation for; no sensibility to be ruffled, no honor to be 
outraged. I do not speak of individuals, but I speak of the race. 

When 1 had occasion the other day to say that civilization owes 
nothing to the Chinese as a race in the way of invention, I thought 
it was received in rather a sneering way by the honorable Senator 
from Massachusetts. He taunted me with the question who those 
people were who had invented the mariner’s compass and gun¬ 
powder, two of the most potent agencies in civilization, and I denied 
that the Chinese were the inventors. I have had occasion to exam¬ 
ine and discover, if possible, the foundations upon which rested the 
claim—by many believed in—that the Chinese had made these dis¬ 
coveries, and I found that the evidence was conclusive against any 
such claim. In the Intellectual Development of Europe, by Profes¬ 
sor Draper, I find the following passages : 

The practical Arabs had not long been engaged in these fascinating hut wild pur¬ 
suits when results of very great importance began to appear. In a scientific point 
of view, the discovery of the strong acids laid the true foundation of chemistry; 
in a political point of View, the invention of gunpowder revolutionized the world. 
(Page 303.) 

In the same book he says: 

They, that is the Arabs, also introduced inventions of a more ominous kind— 
gunpowder and artillery. The cannon they used appears to have been made of 
wrought-iron. But perhaps they more than compensated for these evil contriv¬ 
ances by the introduction of the mariner’s compass. (Page 357.) 

To turn to a still higher authority, I find in the Congressional 
Library volume 6 of the Journal of the North China Branch of the 
Eoyal Asiatic Society, in which Mr. W. F. Mayers, lately Chinese 
secretary to the British legation at Peking, and one of the most 
critical Chinese scholars that ever lived, treats of “the introduction 
and use of gunpowder and fire-arms among the Chinese.” After 
noticing the Chinese authorities on the subject, Mr. Mayers sums up 
(page 82) as follows: 

As regards gunpowder, therefore, it is concluded that, firstly, no proof of its 
invention by the Chinese can be adduced; secondly, there is reason to believe that 
it may have been introduced from India or Central Asia about the fifth or sixth 
century of our era. 

This is the result of an examination of Chinese authorities “ per¬ 
formed with the utmost care” by a scholar whose recent death is a 
serious loss to the investigators of Chinese literature, and as the 
paper was first read in Shanghai and then published there in the 
midst of the chief critics of Chinese books, without any attempt at 
challenge, we are perfectly safe in adopting this as the real truth of 
the matter. 

Now, this eminent scholar, Mr. Mayers, made a similar investigation 
as to the discovery of the mariner’s compass, and came to the con¬ 
clusion that that also the Chinese borrowed from the West. I regret 


9 

to say that the volume containing Mr. Mayers’s paper on that subject 
is not in the Congressional Library, but the fact is nevertheless as [ 
have stated. A glance at the Encyclopaedia Britannica, under the head¬ 
ings of Compass and Gunpowder, will similarly show that that pub¬ 
lication does not countenance the idea that the Chinese were the in¬ 
ventors, although the authors wrote apparently in ignorance of Mr. 
Mayers’s investigations. Therefore, I conclude that the Chinese never 
gave us these discoveries, notwithstanding the sneers that I have 
seen in some newspapers since, and the confident tone with which 
the Senator questioned me as to who else could have made them. And 
I would say further, that there is scarcely a single piece of machinery 
howsoever useful, howsoever ingenious, working in China to-day. The 
only enterprise the Chinese have shown in the way of railroads has 
been in tearing up the only railroad ever built in that country, a rail¬ 
road built by foreigners and afterward bought by the Chinese au¬ 
thorities in order that they might tear it up. 

I did not intend, Mr. President, to-day to make any consecutive 
remarks, therefore if what I have said or may say shall seem desultory, 
the reason will be that 1 rose only to criticise statements taken here 
and there from the speeches of others. The Senator [Mr. Hoar] says: 

The doctrine that free institutions are a monopoly of the favored races, the doc¬ 
trine that oppressed people may sever their old allegiance at will but have no right 
to find a new one, that the bird may fly but may never light, is of quite recent origin. 

I have before said that this doctrine is of very recent origin—that 
a country is obliged to receive all persons that come and has no 
power to prevent them. The honorable Senator stigmatizes as of quite 
recent origin the doctrine “that free institutions are a monopoly of 
the favored races.” Why, sir, he might as well say it is a new doc¬ 
trine that vigor shall be monopolized by the strong races. Free insti¬ 
tutions are only possible with the favored races. It is not because 
they are a monopoly of the favored races, but because no other race 
is capable of creating them ; no other race is capable of perpetuat¬ 
ing them ; no other race is capable of treading freedom’s heights with 
firm and unwavering step. As well might he say that the title of 
LL. D. and graduate of Harvard is not to be monopolized by the few 
who study in that institution four or five years. A monopoly, he says, 
of the favored races ! The favored races, as I said before, are the only 
ones capable of free government; and it is because we monopolize the 
capability that we monopolize the free institutions. 

Then he scouts at the idea that the bird may fly but may never 
alight. We all admit that the bird may fly if he is able, but he is 
not at liberty to alight in our nest without our permission. This race 
of ours has been struggling for centuries upon centuries for the prin¬ 
ciples of liberty. It found this country a wilderness. Our fore¬ 
fathers made great sacrifices to found the institutions which we 
enjoy. With unequaled valor they faced all the rude forces of na¬ 
ture ; they confronted and overcame the wild Indian and the wild 
beast; they subdued the soil, and we, their descendants, on a hun¬ 
dred battle-fields have fought to preserve the precious inheritance 
bequeathed by them ; and now, according to the ideas and doctrines 
of the Senator from Massachusetts and of the majority of the Sena¬ 
tors from New England, we must take off our hats and make a 
bow across the western sea and say to these barbarians: Yon did 
not have the energy and the nerve and the determination to fit any 
couptry for yourselves ; we have fitted this for you, and have done 
more to make it habitable in one century than you have done for 




10 


your country in fifty centuries; and now we beg you to come over 
here and enjoy it, even though your presence forces us to retire. 

Again 1 read from the Senator’s speech: 

There may be much that is wrong connected with the coming of these people 
from China, especially the importation of coolies. But let us iu our statute use 
language which fitly describes the evil and would prevent, not language which 
strikes at the prerogative with which government has no right to interfere. It is 
not importation, but immigration ; it is not importation, but the free coming; it 
is not the slave, or the apprentice, or the prostitute, or the leper, or the thief, but 
the laborer at whom this legislation strikes its blow. 

Mr. President, under the theories of these gentlemen, how can they 
prevent the cooly from coming ? Let us ask what a cooly is. A 
cooly in India or a cooly in China is simply a laborer. Has pov¬ 
erty got to be such a crime, I ask these gentlemen- 

Mr. HOAR. Will the Senator from Nevada allow me to say that 
when I used the term “cooly” I used it in its acceptation in this 
country—what its acceptation maybe in India I do not know—that 
of a laborer imported by another person under a contract forced by 
his employer. 

Mr. JONES, of Nevada. I intend to do the Senator full justice in 
that respect. I simply want to state, by the way, that the cooly is 
merely a laborer in India or in China, but according to the interpreta¬ 
tion in this country a cooly is a man whose passage is paid to the 
United States by some one who has the money, and who in return 
receives the promise of the emigrant to repay the advance with in¬ 
terest either in money or labor after bis arrival. In what particular 
does the Senator find anything wrong or contrary to public policy in 
this transaction ? When did poverty get to be such a crime that this 
so-called inalienable birthright of coming to this country could be 
alienated for any such cause f 

Does the Senator from Massachusetts wish to deprive any man of 
his inalienable rights merely because he is poor f Is it a crime if he 
has not the money to bring Him here, if he borrows it from some one 
who is willing to advance it ? Certainly when lie gets here he is not a 
pauper, because whoever pays his passage would find it incumbent on 
himself in order to get his money back to find him employment as 
soon as he arrived. 

Is there anything criminal in a contract like that ? A large pro¬ 
portion of the immigration from Europe came here in that way ; a 
large proportion of the emigration from the Eastern States to Califor¬ 
nia went in that way, and yet in neither case did I ever hear of any 
forfeiture of rights on account of the immigrant having borrowed the 
passage-money, and it seems impossible that the Senator should main¬ 
tain that the newly discovered inalienable birthright of the for¬ 
eigner to leave his country and settle in whatever other country he 
chooses could be alienated for such a cause. 

If so, it certainly is not so important a birthright as I thought it was. 
The pretext that his labor is owned by the contractor after he gets 
here is dissipated by the fact that there is no law in this country 
to enforce specific performance of any such contract, and therefore 
no greater harm could come by reason of the importation of contract 
coolies than of the coming of Chinese laborers at their own expense. 
Does the Senator know of any coolies being sent here from China 
against their will? If so, then I can understand that his objection 
to cooly importation would be good, but not because the person com¬ 
ing happens to be poor. 

Then, I should like to know how, even if he bo a pauper coming, 


« 



11 


"by wliat right this country deprives a pauper of his birthright ? Wo 
nan only deprive him of that birthright, if it be one, on the plea that 
his presence is injurious to the people of this country. Can we not 
then for the same reason prevent the coming of any and all whose 
presence we may deem injurious to our own we:f ire ? 

The honorable Senator from Massachusetts lays down the following 
proposition: 

The insertion of the phrase “ the pursuit of happiness,” in the enumeration of 
the natural rights for securing which government is ordained, and the denial of 
which constitutes just cause for its overthrow, was intended as an explicit affirma¬ 
tion that the right of every human being who obeys the equal laws to go every¬ 
where on the surface of the earth that his welfare may require is beyond the right¬ 
ful control of government. It is a birthright derived immediately from Him who 
‘ ; made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and 
hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation.” 
He made, so our fathers held, of one blood all the nations of men. He gave them 
the whole face of the earth whereon to dwell. He reserved for himself by his 
agents heat and cold, and climate, and soil, and water, and land to determine the 
bounds of their habitation. 

The rights are to u life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Who¬ 
ever attempts to pursue happiness must pursue it as the majority of the 
people in the country in which he lives determines that lie can pur¬ 
sue it. Is it left to each individual to shy how he will pursue hap¬ 
piness, without reference to the general law ? As I think was said 
before in this discussion, we all agree that marriage is a civil con¬ 
tract needing only the voluntary consent of the parties thereto. If 
I should choose to make such civil contract with three or four persons 
of the opposite sex, they giving their voluntary consent thereto, all 
in the pursuit of happiness, by what right is it that the nation or the 
State can come in and obstruct the pursuit ? Simply because it is 
the right and duty of the Government to legislate for the general 
good and to prescribe rules of marriage which restrict natural rights ; 
and I may say here in passing that almost all the important rights 
Ave enjoy are artificial rights that have superseded natural rights. 
The rule, in my opinion, is that we may pursue happiness until we 
cross the line of the happiness of somebody else, and it is for the gen¬ 
eral good that the laws should indicate the limits within which the 
individual can pursue happiness. 

The Senator from Massachusetts states that— 

By the census of 1880 the number of Chinese in this country was 105,000—one 
five-hundredth part of the whole population. The Chinese are the most easily gov¬ 
erned race in the woi'ld. Yet every Chinaman in America has four hundred and 
ninety-nine Americans to control him. 

I for one, speaking for the Pacific coast, have reason to be very 
^grateful to the Senator from Massachusetts for allowing the popula¬ 
tion of Massachusetts to be counted in making this computation, 
even though they bear none of the burdens of that immigration. 
What sort of a computation would he think it was, how fair and how 
disingenuous a computation would he regard it, if a great contagion 
was sweeping over the Pacific States, and it should happen that one 
in three of the able-bodied population had perished, and that 105,000 
had died in a few cities on that coast ? Would he exclaim: “ Only 
one hundred and five thousand; what is that? Just average them 
with the 50,000,000 people of the United States, and what you call a 
calamity will be shown to be utterly insignificant.” 

It is a wonder to me that he did not also embrace within his cal¬ 
culation all the rest of the civilized people of the world, in order to 
make the average look a little better than it does for his side of the 
question. Why, sir, the 105,000 have already occupied large portions 


12 


of that coast to the exclusion of our own people, and an average can ¬ 
not he made of the whole United States, for the reason that tin*! Chi¬ 
nese population have not distributed themselves on the principle of 
averages. If they had distributed themselves over the whole coun¬ 
try they might in these numbers have been easily absorbed; they 
might create no great danger; but massed as they are on a limited 
area among the small population of white people living on our coast, 
they threaten the very existence of our institutions, and it is that of 
which we complain. 

The honorable Senator [Mr. Hoar] asks: 

Will it be maintained that if California could have for nothing what she gets 
cheaply from Chinese labor, she would not he better otf ?—if the swamp lands had 
been made prairie lands by nature; if the ravines had been filled and mountains tun¬ 
neled by nature, so that the road-bed was ready for the rail; if every man, instead 
of buying shoes from Massachusetts, had a pair left gratis at his door, that the State 
would not be better off? Is barren land or productive land best for a State ? Then 
surely the laborer who does these things at least cost does most for the community, 
and gives the people who occupy the State opportunity for better profit in other 
fields of industry. 

I regret to bud in nearly every statement be makes against this 
bill that in treating of the American laborer he strikes a deadly 
blow at him while he extols him to the skies as being engaged in the 
most honorable calling'in the world. Is it to be supposed that if the 
Chinese shall reclaim the 'swamp lands they will not occupy them f 
Is it to be supposed if they build tunnels they will not hold them ? 
Is it to be supposed if they have the capacity for doing these things 
that they will not invade every other industrial pursuit? And 
when they have invaded all these industrial pursuits, where will bo 
the American artisans and laborers ? There will be no civilized com¬ 
munity, but only a few rich employers on the one side and a large 
number of the most degraded kind of employes on the other. 

The honorable Senator gives us to understand that there are cer¬ 
tain kinds of laborers who will become subordinate to our laborers, 
and lift them up to a higher level; that the Chinese are to be a sub¬ 
stratum for all our laborers, each one of whom is to become an em¬ 
ployer of Chinamen. Mr. President, it does not work that way. 
These are not the results we see. The Chinaman is not to be put off 
with the labor that we say he is lit for. He will apply for every 
sj>ecies of labor that he can perform, and he will drive out of employ¬ 
ment that large proportion of our population, namely, all our people 
w r lio depend for their daily bread upon their daily toil in the grades 
of labor that he can pursue. 

These gentlemen fail to tell us where our dispossessed laborers can 
go. The only way they can live is to descend to the abject condition 
of the Chinese. You cannot introduce Chinese wages and Chinese 
laborers without bringing in Chinese conditions, social and political. 

I have noticed, Mr. President, that most of those who are in favor 
of the largest liberty being extended to the Chinese immigrant to this 
country are also in favor of a tariff—a tariff which has been urged 
as necessary to protect the American laborer from the degradation of 
competition with the pauper labor of Europe, as it is usually termed. 
In reality, if we may judge of their motives by the action of the men 
who are now advocating a tariff, it was not the American laborer 
they wished to protect against the pauper labor of Europe, but it was 
the American capitalist, the lordly manufacturer, that they wished 
to protect against the free competition of the capitalist of Europe. 
Our capitalist manufacturer wanted a larger interest on his money 
than the capitalist of Europe was willing to accept, and he was given 
the benefit of a tariff. 


13 


Let us see how that tariff works. It works in this wise: that every¬ 
thing that the capitalist manufacturer has to sell he sells in a pro¬ 
tected market, he sells in a market in which foreign capitalists cannot 
compete with him. 

How is it with what he has to buy ? For the principal article he has 
to buy, to wit, the labor of men, he demands free trade in the broad¬ 
est sense, not only free trade in bringing in laborers of our own race 
who can soon accommodate themselves to onr conditions of life, but 
the bringing in a class of laborers who have been inured to poverty 
by thousands of years of training.* The capitalist asks the broadest 
free trade for that, liis own market in any event being protected. 

Now, how is it with the laborer ? Everything he wants to buy he 
has to buy from liis capitalist master in a protected market; every¬ 
thing he has to sell, to wit, his labor, (and, unlike tlie capitalist, he 
cannot hold it away from sale ; unlike the capitalist he cannot wait 
for better times or travel here and there where he pleases to sell it, 
but he must sell it every day,) he must sell in the openest market 
in the world. This is the theory in favor of the laborer that the gen¬ 
tleman propounds to us. We reject it, and by this bill propose to 
bar out this degrading, this shocking competition with our own peo¬ 
ple. And yet lie tells us that we are striking a blow at labor, that 
we are proposing to inflict injury on the laborers of our country. 

Ah! sir, when the artisans .and laborers of this country shall be 
made to understand that they are subjected to free trade in labor 
they will demand as one of the conditions of their existence that they 
shall have an open market in which to buy that which they want if 
it is an open market in which they must sell their labor, the only 
thing they have to sell. They will never consent to a tariff on bales 
and boxes and hampers of goods coupled with free trade in human 
brain and muscle. 

The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes] told us that he 
wanted the American people to know that this bill was a blow struck 
at labor. Yes, sir; it is a blow struck at degraded, under-paid, under- 
clothed, and under-fed labor, and it is a blow in favor of that fair 
remuneration which the forces of our civilization up to this hour 
have decreed that the laborer should get. There never was a greater 
fallacy than that cheap labor is a source of wealth to any country; 
on the contrary, the facts show that in every country where cheap 
labor is found there the greatest poverty prevails, there the condi¬ 
tions of abject dependence are most abundant, and there will be 
found misery and want, and not wealth and comfort. If cheap labor 
is the great source of wealth to a country, why ought not China, 
which to-day is a poor country, to be the richest in the world ? You 
have three hundred million laborers in China that can be had to 
work for the merest pittance. 

If our capitalists, jealous of the way in which our workmen with 
their increased intelligence combine in order to get their fair share 
of the results of protection, should attempt to introduce this new 
.supply of cheap laborers, or, as the Senator very tenderly said, bring 
in “the little brown man” as a sort of counter-balance to the trades- 
unions of this country, I suggest that the American laborers will 
see to it that no “little brown man ” is brought in. They may agree 
to the incoming and to the competition of European laborers, men 
of their own race, who, while they increase the supply off labor, also 
increase in nearly as great a proportion the demand for the products 
of labor. On the other hand, while the incoming of the honorable 
Senator’s “little brown man” tends to glut the labor market to the 


14 


full extent of his increased numbers, to nothing like the same extent 
as the European does lie increase the demand for products. To allow 
free admission to the products of foreign labor would not be to the* 
interest of the capitalist manufacturer; and shall it be tolerated 
that when our laborers combine to get the fair remuneration of their 
labor, “the little brown man” of the honorable Senator from Massa¬ 
chusetts shall be introduced to coerce them into accepting much less, 
than this fair remuneration to which they are entitled. The American, 
laborer has come to understand this, and he will never tolerate the 
immigration or importation of the “little brown man,” who would 
be used as an instrument for his own destruction. 

If I were to admit, which I'cannot, that all races have a natural 
right to come to this country without our consent and without our 
being able to prohibit them, then I should be obliged to admit that 
the same natural law gave the same right of access to this country 
to the products of the labor of all races. But I deny both propo¬ 
sitions. The laborers of foreign countries have no more right to- 
come here independently of our will than have the products of their 
labor, the admission of which at our ports has always been under 
our own exclusive control. 

We claim the right to exclude the Chinese from our shores, because- 
if we were to permit them to come at their own will they would never* 
cease to come until the industrial conditions in China and the United 
States were equalized. 

I said a few moments ago that there never was a greater fallacy 
than that cheap labor is a source of wealth. It affords, perhaps, a 
temporary advantage, but at the sacrifice of vastly greater advantages 
in the long run. The true mode of increasing production and of dimin¬ 
ishing the cost of production is to increase human command over the 
forces of nature. It is in that way that it is possible to have at one 
and the same time a larger profit for capital and a better remunera¬ 
tion for workmen. The contrary method of using cheap labor puts 
an end to labor-saving inventions, by diminishing the motive for 
them and by reducing laborers to a condition which takes away their 
capacity to invent. It is nevertheless true that men will generally 
seek a temporary advantage unless the policy of the laws restrains 
them to a course dictated by the permanent interests of a country. 
I believe somewhat in a tariff. I think our manufacturing capital¬ 
ists should be protected, provided always that the laborers they em¬ 
ploy have their fair share of the results of the protection. But if the 
purchase of American goods at somewhat higher prices than those 
at which similar foreign goods could be purchased w~as left to indi¬ 
vidual option, foreign goods would completely command the market. 
The protection to American capital and labor must be given by the 
coercion of law if at all. 

If from the wealth of this or any other country, as it is exhibited 
by statisticians or appraised for taxation purposes, we deduct that 
part of the valuation of lands which results solely from density of 
population and is independent of the improvements put upon them, 
what remains is insignificant in comparison with the value, even if 
estimated in a merely monetary point of view, of the original native 
intellectual power, cultivation, science, and arts of the population. 
It has been estimated that the average stock of all the things which 
make up the food and clothing of mankind does not exceed the con¬ 
sumption for six months. Wealth consists more in the power oi 
production than in accumulations of what has been produced. It 
will thus be apparent that a deterioration by a very moderate per- 


15 


centage of tlie character and force of a population by intermixing 
with it an inferior race may involve a greater national loss of wealthy 
and that of the most reliable and permanent form, than all which cau 
be gained by employers from a reduction of wages. 

How transitory as well as trivial is the advantage, such as it is, 
of cheap labor, when obtained by the introduction and employment 
of essentially inferior races, will be made clear by contrasting the- 
present condition of the English-speaking people in Great Britain 
and in this country, with what we can plainly see it would now be 
if at the date of the American Revolution it had been the policy of 
the whole of those people, as it was of a small part of them in our 
Southern States, to draw their laborers from the heathen and be¬ 
nighted quarters of the globe. There was undoubtedly a temptation 
to do that, from the fact that an equal amount of work could be ex¬ 
torted from such laborers for less pay ; or, to express the same fact in 
other words, that of the results of the work of such laborers a 
greater proportion could be made to inure to the benefit of their em¬ 
ployers, or of their owners, if a system of slavery was adopted. 

The case is a supposable one, although it fortunately did not in 
fact occur, that the property and employing classes, the persons who 
had money to expend for either consumption or production purposes 
in both Great Britain and in the northern as well as in the southern 
American colonies, (now States,) might have been in 1775 dissatis¬ 
fied with the rates of wages they were being obliged to pay, and 
might have sought-a remedy in importations of some part of the 
teeming millions of Africa and Asia, to be made use of under some 
one of the many forms and modifications of servitude. 

Without doubt the remedy would have been temporarily an effi¬ 
cient one, but at what an immeasurably greater sacrifice of the per¬ 
manent and lasting interest of the English-speaking employers and 
property classes of 1775, and of their posterity. No less a sacrifice 
than that of the greater part, and perhaps of all of the inventions and 
discoveries of the English-speaking race during the past century— 
the steam-engine, the spinning-jenny, the loom, the cotton-gin, the 
effectual use of coal in making iron, the railroad, the steamship, the 
electric telegraph, the steam printing-press, the sewing-machine, and 
the other innumerable advances in science and art which have, during 
that memorable epoch, illustrated the powers of the human mind, 
subjected the forces of nature to the control and uses of man, given 
dignity and enjoyment to life, and, looking merely to material and 
pecuniary results, have created an aggregate magnitude of wealth 
unknown and impossible to the highest degrees of African and Asiatic 
civilization, while they have secured to the wealthier classes and the 
wage-earning classes a command over both necessaries and luxuries 
unknown and impossible to former times under any form of civiliza¬ 
tion. 

The introduction of the cheap labor of an inferior race in 1775 would 
have arrested progress in every part of the British dominions as it 
did in the British southern colonies (now States) on this continent. 
The presence of an inferior race either inevitably expels the superior 
race or reduces it to the v r ays, modes of life, and all the other con¬ 
ditions of the new-comers. 

The principal motive to improvements is that of savinglabor. This 
motive is sensibly weakened and almost destroyed when workmen can 
be had at the price of the scantiest subsistence. Furthermore, the 
general employment of laborers of an inferior race cuts off all that 
largest proportion of inventions which originate in the suggestions 
of workmen themselves. 


16 


No improvements or inventions are to be looked for either from 
such laborers or from the free laborers of the superior race, inasmuch 
as the constant tendency must be to a level of condition between both 
tlisse classes. A scale of wages graduated to the bare support of life 
imposes a duration of daily toil which exhausts all the physical and 
mental vitality of the laborer, leaves no time or strength for reflec¬ 
tive thought, and completely represses the exercise of the inventive 
faculty, even when it exists. 

No, Mr. President, the wealth of a country does not consist in the 
bushels of wheat, in the tons of coal and iron, or in the commodi¬ 
ties generally that it possesses. No wealth is possible without intel¬ 
ligence. Let a white man go with a mountain of gold into the center 
of Africa and Asia, and has he any considerable wealth ? Are any of 
the conditions of wealth around him? None whatever. He has got 
to import intelligence there, without which no important accumu¬ 
lation of wealth can possibly be effected. Does anybody tell me that 
you can introduce a lower order of people into a country without 
affecting the higher orders ? Can a current of barbarism be per¬ 
mitted to flow into this country without affecting the white people 
for the worse ? You may lift up the barbarous people above their 
dull, dead inanity, but do you not drag us down correspondingly ? 

Sir, I am in favor of this bill because I believe it to be an advance 
in public law, making it conform to the law that nature has written 
on the face of the physical universe and upon the face of man. Does 
anybody suppose for an instant that if the African were not in this 
country to-day we should be anxious to welcome him ? Does any re¬ 
flecting man believe that he is an advantage to this country ? Is it 
not true if his place were occupied by smaller numbers of intelligent 
men of our own creative race that the country would be stronger 
than it is ? What caused the intellectual stagnation that was 
observable everywhere in the South outside of politics, the bar, and 
the pulpit ? 

Look at the dearth in our Patent Office of names from the South¬ 
ern States., Why was it ? Because a servile race was performing the 
labor of those States, making it dishonorable there ; and because few 
or none of the laborers of that region belonged to this great creative 
race, who alone could have given the stimulus to the material devel¬ 
opment of the Southern States which they have given to that of the 
Northern States. 

Does anybody pretend to tell me that it is a blessing to this country 
that those people are here ? It is no fault of ours that they are here ; 
it is no fault of theirs ; it is the fault of a past generation ; but their 
presence here is a great misfortune to us to-day, and the question of 
the adjustment of the relations between the two races socially and 
politically is no nearer to a settlement now than it was the day Sum¬ 
ter was fired upon. 

The philosophy of the history of every age and our experience of the 
last seventeen years justify me in making the prophecy thatthe Afri¬ 
can race will never be permitted permanently to dominate any State 
of the South. The experiment of conferring upon them political 
power in proportion to their numbers has thus far proved a dismal 
failure, and in my judgment will so continue as long as human naturo 
is as it is. The failure has not been because we have not done every¬ 
thing we could to make it succeed, but because laws independent of 
and above all human laws have irrevocably stamped upon the one race 
its superiority over the other. 

Intellectand intelligence are forces in this world often greater than 


17 


numbers. It makes no difference wliat votes you put in a ballot- 
box, how many little white pellets of paper that siguify one thing 
and dark pellets of paper that signify another. Those pellets of paper 
in that box which represent a majority of force will in the end rule 
even if they be a minority of numbers. If contrary to my expec¬ 
tations the colored race should permanently secure the control of any 
of the States of the South, and the whites should tire of trying to 
overcome the majority of numbers by forceor intimidation, I predict 
that they would migrate to the State where their own race was in 
the majority. I have nothing but the very kindliest feeling toward 
the negro which is intensified by the recollection of the oppression he 
has suffered at the hands of my own race, and never would I con¬ 
sciously do him an injustice. The negro possesses in a marked degree 
all the humane and affectionate sympathies. He easily becomes 
attached to those with whom he lives and is loyal to them. He 
adopts our customs and is proud to imitate them, instead of taking 
a pride, as the Chimaman does, in adhering to his own national 
habits. To the extent of his capacity for improvement he has a 
willingness and even ambition to improve himself, instead of shut¬ 
ting himself up as the Chinaman does, with an indomitable self-con¬ 
ceit within the limit of present attainments. The negroes now in 
this country were born in it; they speak our language ; they have 
the same religion, and they recognize the same standard and code 
of morals. Considering how their race was brought here, and how 
admirably well they have borne themselves during and since their 
transition from servitude to freedom, we owe them not merely jus¬ 
tice but kindness. My warmest sympathies have always been with 
•them, and always will be. I was first, last, and all the time for their 
emancipation, and trust that I shall never fail to assist in securing for 
them all the rights and the highest advancement which are possible 
to them. I cannot but feel admiration for the acquirements which 
many of them have made under difficult and depressing circum¬ 
stances, and I have no doubt that their race is capable under- our 
leadership of attaining a much higher than their present develop¬ 
ment. 

We clothed the African with the blue uniform of his country which 
he never disgraced. His instincts were against the men who held 
him in slavery. When the war of the rebellion broke out he knew 
intuitively which side would strike the shackles from his limbs, and 
with fervent enthusiasm and unwavering fidelity he espoused their 
cause. That he would do so was eloquently prefigured fifty years 
ago in a speech of Governor McDowell, of Virginia, in which, advocat¬ 
ing the gradual emancipation of the slave, he said : 

You may chain the African like an ox to his task ; you may teach him that he 
works only to live, and that he lives only to work, and that his destiny is to he a 
slave ; but the idea that he is one day to be free is a candle lit in his soul by the 
hand of Deity not to be extinguished by the hand of man. 

There never were more truthful words spoken; but it is one thing 
to aspire to be free from personal servitude and a very different thing 
to have the intelligence, the self-containment, the great qualities of 
character that can direct and support free government. Does any¬ 
body believe if the restraining, the directing, the guiding intellect 
of the white man that now surrounds the African in the South were 
entirely taken away and he was left to maintain our institutions 
alone, that he could do it ? I do not know how my friends on this 
side of the House may feel, but I for one do not believe that they could 
be maintained without impairment for a period of ten years. • This 
2 JO 


18 


judgment may seem to some to be liarsli and unwarranted, but it is 
the truth as I see it. 

Suppose, then, that when the first ship-load of Africans was landed 
in this country some one had risen on the floor of one of the assem¬ 
blies of the States and opposed their landing because they would in 
the end prove the source of immense disturbance in the country, be¬ 
cause their presence would occasion a great civil war, because they 
would produce precisely the effects we have since seen that they 
have produced in the South, how true these views would have been, 
though doubtless they would have been regarded as groundless and 
fanciful alarms. Anil, digressing for one minute, I ask Senators to 
reflect what would have been the condition of this entire country 
if the same proportion of Africans had been in the North as were in 
the South ? I say, then, suppose that objecting to this immigration 
because it was the immigration of an incongruous race, of a race that 
could not assimilate or amalgamate with us, this speaker had urged 
the exclusion of the negro from our country, he would have uttered 
wise words and given sound advice. How delusive would have been 
the rejoinder, in the light of our experience, of any one who might 
have said: 

We have broad fields and extensive areas where cotton, tobacco, and sugar can 
be raised; and it is for our common advantage to bring in these negroes and obtain 
the benefit of their cheap labor. 

A similar rejoinder, and one equally delusive, is to-day made to 
the facts and arguments in support of a measure to prevent the im¬ 
migration of the Chinese, an immigration that threatens evils more 
portentous than could result from the importation of the African. 
The skill of the Chinese enables them to invade more of the indus¬ 
trial pursuits than the negro is capable of invading. Deft and subtle 
and able in manipulation, the Chinaman can be utilized in almost 
any kind of a factory; but his race is socially more incongruous to 
ours and less capable of assimilation with us than is the negro race. 

In dealing with the Chinese we are dealing with a race whose his¬ 
torical existence of fifty centuries shows that they have outlived all 
contemporaneous nations, and during that immense period have never 
been able to rise from the ranks of semi-barbarism. The reason of 
this unexampled national longevity is that they have been a race by 
themselves, a homogeneous race, and tenacious of their homogeneity. 
When ouce or twice conquered by the Tartars of the North, a nation 
closely resembling themselves, they imposed their customs, their 
laws, their institutions, and the ir beliefs on the conqueror, thus ulti¬ 
mately subduing him by the force and tenacity of their peculiar 
systems. 

What encouragement do we find in the history of our dealings with 
the negro race or in our dealings with the Indian race to induce us to 
permit another race-struggle in our midst? It is because the inhab¬ 
itants of the Pacific coast are in favor of civilization, because they 
are in favor of our civilization, and not of some other civilization, 
that they oppose the further incoming of the Chinese. They believe 
in maintaining the homogeneity of our population, and they believe 
that on that homogeneity depends the permanence of our institu¬ 
tions, depends our progress and everything upon which we build our 
hopes. 

Mr. President, when I rose to my feet, without having any prepared 
speech, I did not intend to say as much as I have said. I simply de- 
sirecl to present a few of the considerations that impel the people of 
the Pacific coast to conjure their brethren in other parts of the conn- 


try to come to their assistance against this tidal wave of barbarism, 
that is not averaging itself over the United States generally so as to 
he easily absorbed, but which is massing itself on our western borders. 
It is invading one industry after another and driving our own people 
out, and has already taken possession of the vine, of the fig-tree, of 
the wheat-field, and of every avenue of manufacture. I make this 
earnest appeal not because the white man has not the physical and 
intellectual power to compete with the Chinaman, but because with 
the qualities which the white man possesses, with his civilization, 
with his lineage, with the blood that flows in his veins, he disdains 
to abandon his present condition of life and to descend to the degrad¬ 
ing level of Chinese labor and Chinese wages, and to the unrelieved 
and barbarous penury of Chinese daily life. 

We appeal to Senators to stand by the judgment of 154,000 of their 
fellow-citizens, spoken without passion, spoken without vindictive¬ 
ness; 154,000 people, as against only 1,100 votes that could be obtained 
in favor of this immigration on a secret ballot. Why such univer¬ 
sal concurrence of opinion on a question like this ? Tile people of the 
Pacific coast are not a provincial people; they do not speak the pre¬ 
judices of a section, they are made up of emigrants from every city and 
State of this Union and from the leading countries of Europe, so that 
they are in a very marked degree a cosmopolitan people. 

At first they had no objection to Chinese immigration, because they 
had no experience with it. They now see what it will inevitably 
result in. They are not so unreasonable as to say that the interests of 
the Pacific coast are destroyed now by the 105,000 Chinese there, but 
they see that the industries of that coast will, if this immigration be 
continued, be inevitably destroyed for our own peojde ; and they 
ask Congress to check this evil while it is within moderate and con¬ 
trollable limits, for if the rest of the United States should contain as 
great a proportion of Chiuese as are now in California the evil would 
be too large to be peacefully dealt with and it might occasion another 
civil war which, unlike the last, would carry the horrors of an intes¬ 
tine struggle into every part of the country. 

I trust, Mr. President, that the views of that coast will not be mis¬ 
apprehended, will not be misinterpreted. It is because they are in 
favor of our own civilization ; it is because they are in favor of the 
homogeneity of our population and citizenship; it is because they 
are in favor of labor with rewards such as the forces of our society 
have given to it, that they opposp the incoming of the barbarous 
hordes from semi-civilized Asia. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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